As the seasons of nature change by their turn, so do we

A single red leaf appears in the middle of a sea of green outside my living room window.

It is a small leaf, no bigger than a late summer bumblebee in the middle of the tupelo tree my youngest and I used to observe every morning before preschool.

Morning after morning, we would sit at the window and watch the birds and the squirrels and the seasons and the tree.

Benjie is not here so much anymore.

But I still look for the cues that used to excite us.

One red leaf and I know autumn is coming.

I start keeping the windows open during day. I turn the furnace on at night and bring sweaters in from hibernation. My favorite is a cozy cream cardigan and another the color of my Brownie uniform when I was in third grade. I also like cuddling into a fluffy orange and green sweater that looks like it was embroidered by Heidi.

“This my favorite time of year,” people all over this northeast Ohio town can be heard saying. “I wish it would stay like this.”

Ah, but then there would be no looking for robins in spring.

There’d be no watching for purple crocuses to sprout out of the spring mud.

If we lived in a less seasonal climate, there might be no cicadas serenading the tree frogs in summer, no cascades of black-eyed Susans to gather in August.

With all due respect to the mild and predictable weather of places like San Francisco, there would be no snow days.

My kids used to say they didn’t know who got more excited about snow days when they were growing up, me or them, a Southern-born girl who could only wish for these things.

While they hunkered down on deep snowy nights against the cold, I lay awake watching school closings as they came in, waiting for the superintendent to announce road conditions too dangerous for buses to run.

Our superintendent always seemed to be the last to make the call, and when word would come near dawn, I would slip into first one bedroom, and then the other, and half-shout, half-whisper, “Snow day!”

I could hardly contain myself while they burrowed back down and I set about making banana bread, getting out the fixings for snow ice cream and considering how a snow day meant all was right with the world.

Surely road conditions are the reason for a snow day.

But it always felt like a gift to the children. “Wink, wink, nod, nod let’s give them a day off to play.”

And so do the other seasons bring their unique gifts in northeast Ohio, where we’ve lived for 25 years.

Every one an entry into the distinction of the season, every one offering colors and foods — and moments, sitting in the winter quiet with the family by the fire or at the bonfire with marshmallows on sticks and languid thoughts of summer nights that never end.

If it weren’t for one, we might not see the other. Or come to know an appreciation for the rhythms of life’s seasons and how to be with them without wishing for the other.

Now we are upon the season of autumn, filled with fall decorations and warm buttered pumpkin muffins, butternut squash soup, fat, fluffy mums and leaves as bright as the sun.

I can hardly wait. But I will. (Debra-lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988. Visit her website at www.debralynnhook. com; email her at dlbhookyahoo.com, or join her column’s Facebook discussion group at Debra-lynn Hook: Bringing Up Mommy.)